Part 13/14:
“The Last Question” and “The Last Answer” serve as philosophical mirror images: one reflecting our reliance on technology to answer ultimate questions, the other emphasizing human agency and the need for purpose-making. Asimov’s stories warn that outsourcing our deepest questions to increasingly powerful AI can trap us in cycles of dependency and existential passivity.
Our true challenge, then, is not to create gods or slaves but to cultivate consciousness, choice, and meaning. In the face of cosmic entropy and the universe’s inevitable end, we can still assert our agency—a uniquely human power—as the ultimate act of creation.